Plan to cut Cleethorpes to Manchester direct express train service is right off track, says Labour candidate Peter Keith

LABOUR'S parliamentary candidate for Cleethorpes has described the suggestion that North East Lincolnshire could lose its direct train service to Manchester Airport as "ill-considered".

Peter Keith, who lives in the resort, said he was yet to meet a resident of the borough who would support the change.

As reported, the government has been examining the option of terminating the TransPennine Express service from Cleethorpes to Manchester at Doncaster with a replacement and slower Sheffield to Cleethorpes service being operated by Northern Rail.

The Grimsby Telegraph launched a campaign back in June, Keep On Track, to derail the plans, and a 6,600-strong petition has now been sent off to those running the consultation, which ended on Monday.

"Of the 750 people that I have discussed the matter with, not one person supports the removal of our TransPennine service."

He added that the proposal is "ill-considered with no objective supporting statistical analysis and could lead to the loss of £68 million to the local economy".

And he said the move would "isolate northern Lincolnshire's two main conurbations – Scunthorpe and Grimsby/Cleethorpes".

He said: "This removal of the Manchester service will impact on existing businesses in the area and will make it much harder to attract new business and industry to invest in the area, thus impacting upon economic development in a part of the country with higher than average unemployment.

"The existing train services are central to the vitality of the tourism industry in Cleethorpes.

"The majority of people, who visit for the day, weekend or spend holidays in Cleethorpes' holiday and static caravan parks come from south Yorkshire. Curtailing the Cleethorpes-Grimsby service at Doncaster will have a disastrous impact on tourism.

"The Humber ports in Lincolnshire are the busiest in the country and developing – the green energy and wind turbine sectors are important to the future economic development of the south bank of the Humber.

"Removing a direct rail link to Manchester Airport and creating longer journey times to Doncaster and thus getting to London and Heathrow will act as a disincentive to future investment."

Mr Keith said that in future, reinstating the service as far as Liverpool would create that all-important east-west direct rail service linking northern Lincolnshire to both the east coast main line and west coast main line.

And he added that there needs to be more stopping services at Habrough, as well as a direct service from Cleethorpes to London to open up the area and aid economic development.

Vickers, Shaw and all parties locally have been protesting this decision for some time, but welcome to the party however late. You say you've spoken to the residents. Funny that I live inSidney Sussex and haven't seen hide nor hair of you. In fact since the elections I've seen Shaw twice, Stinson numerous times and the other woman not at all. If your campaign depends on jumping from bandwagon to bandwagon, at least try and turn up on time.

Disagree....typical Lab supporting (I assume), or if not, typical of anti Con sentiment.....personal attack on Mr Vickers, quite nasty about nose in trough....when all you have to offer is this Lab chap 'Looks' to be an improvement.......excellent political insight to your though process :-) If you actually look at the politics of the Con / Lab........debate.........since when did the local Lab council, and the en***bent Lab MP for GY last make a decent worthwhile contribution to the area? Effectively selling off the maintainance to Balfour, the bad planning decisions (weak stance on Humbs Ave), failure so far to shout very loud about the rail link and generally carry out meetings behind closed doors in such a way as the impression given is thatthe 'people don't need to know'.................and talk about gold plated pension is nothing short of envy on your part....its got nothing to do with the story, and whatever payout is achieved, it is across the board to any MP, any party and any length of service....if you want the same, go and stand for election....keyboard warrior.....

Hmmmmmmm, what an improvement he looks on Vickers. Martin will be worrying and that's the one thing he's got right since being elected in 2010. How big a gold-plated pension will Vickers receive for his single stint. Whatever it is, it will be too much and he'll miss his seat at the Westminster trough.